Synthèses Bac Anglais Oral

Synthèse – BAC Oral d’Anglais.

Places and Forms of Power

First of all, I will try to define the notion «places and forms of power». In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence the attitude and the opinion of people. In order to live together, members of a community accept rules and laws. This helps to create social cohesion but it can also results in conflicts and tensions. Even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter-powers which question it, aim at limiting its excesses and resist it.

In India, some highly placed people abuse their power to submit other. That why, in a first part, I will begin by talking about oppressed people who can’t resist introducing the life of Indian women, continuing with the reasons why they do not see alternatives and ending with the Dalits and The caste system. The second part will deal with oppressed people who have the capacity to revolt. I would start this part by Martin Macwan’s life and finish by that of Iqbal Masih. In conclusion, we can wonder why some oppressed people resist while others don’t.

First, we studied different texts about the life of Indian Women. In one of them, the narrator is an American Female photographer who went to India to report on poor Indian Women. She talked to them while she was photographing them and she discovered that their lives were unspeakable. She told them to revolt but they say it was impossible to change things. Even though their lives are really horrible.

Then, we saw in the same text, that they should raise the children and they are expected to do all the cooking every morning, and so much more. We have concluded that if they see no alternative it’s because their religion is so since thousands of year. Moreover, they have no power, no education and do not have free time. So we can understand their views on the situation.

And finally, we studied the Dalits and the Caste system. For that, we saw a text called « The Caste System » in which we learned about the Dalits. We learned that throughout the world, most of people have barely or never heard of the Dalits. The few people who have heard about them think that The Caste System has been abolished. Even if this is false. Dalits still exist and they are made to perform menial jobs, like scour septic tanks for example. But that’s not all, they also have many prohibitions. For example, they mustn’t wear sunglasses and they are forbidden to tuck in their shirt. They also are denied the fields allotted to them.

In a second part, we will talk about people who have the strength to revolt.

First, we saw the Martin Macwan’s life. When he was young, he was made to stay after class to clean the classroom. He also worked on a tobacco factory and in a farm after school. At university, he met a group of professors interested in minority groups. He also sent is spare money home so he never had breakfast because it had to be paid for. He is seen as a hero because in 1981, He set up co-operatives in his native region. He would hire Dalits workers and pay them four times the government rate. As a result, the Dalits wouldn’t work in the fields of high-caste men anymore. Finally they had to match the co-operatives wages. Then, Macwan helped Dalits to prosecute high-caste men. He trained them to answer lawyers’ questions and in the end, they won trials.

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